CarlosT has asked for the
wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I've got a task that is just screaming for automation. Every week, I have to get a number for each of 36 entities for some metrics I do and that basically consists of counting the 'Y's in a certain column in a table on a company web page. Each entity requires picking a value in a dropdown, refreshing the page, and counting 'Y's. It's a slow, cumbersome, tedious, and vulnerable to error process. What I'd love is to point perl at the site and get back the numbers quickly and cleanly.

Here's what I do know (I don't know what matters):

The site uses kerberos for authentication

The site uses SSL

the page only works reliably in Internet Explorer

I have no previous experience with web automation, so I'm flying fairly blind. I tried using LWP, but couldn't connect because of SSL issues. I then gave up on perl for a while and tried using greasemonkey, but that was when I discovered that the page didn't actually work with Firefox. So most recently I've been trying to use Win32-IEAutomation, but haven't been able to get that off the ground either. This is what I currently have:

If the page only works with IE then there's a chance that it uses ActiveX - the core of the HTML page would be an <object> tag with a bunch of ugly parameters. If that is what you're getting then one or more of the parameters might be URLs that you could try accessing directly. But if it does use ActiveX and you can't access the data URLs directly then you're pretty much screwed.

i have launched IE with URL using IEAutomation.
now i need to navigate to test box ,
i am using getTextBox method
but getting error , no text box present with specificed option name (as well i can see focus is in cmd prompt it doesent goes to IE)
anyone is hainvg any idea about it.

I guess, IEAutomation and Win32::Waitr use AutoIt because it saves you lots of work mixing Win32::OLE and Win32::GuiTest and whatnot, and AutoIt has a big community, so when you're stuck, you can ask win32 users who are automating win32, instead of figuring things out yourself

Dear monk, to get rid of that error you need to install AutoIt application. Either a licensed ware or a free version. Probably you can get it from: (https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit/downloads/)
Now if you are interested in a portable version, probably you can get it from: (https://softwarespot.wordpress.com/code/autoit-portable/)
and its script editor from: (https://www.autoitscript.com/site/autoit-script-editor/)
Unless you install AutoIt application the .dll files will not be registered and the code that uses Win32::IEAutomation might not work. Its better to go for normal install than to go for portable version as the .dll files need to be registered with OS. Once you install the AutoIt application, I am very much sure that Win32::IEAutomation will work flawlessly with IExplorer 8 and below. Click method wouldn't work if IExplorer version is 11. Didn't try using it on IExplorer versions 9 and 10